Need help with animated menu buttons

[SamusK]

I decided once again to dive back into the world of RGSS again. I am programming a menu completely from scratch to resemble the old shining force style menu. I have it nearly completed but I am stuck on one little thing. I want the menu to be animated in that when you press the key left, right , up, down it moves to that desired button and it begins to animate. I have to pictures for each of the animation. What would be the best course of action.

what it does is it shows the one picture, waits a few frames and changes to another picture, waits again and goes back to the first picture which then repeats until the person presses the key

would I use a for loop, or a regular loop to get the pictures to simulate an animated button? I understand coding but Ruby is a little foreign to me.

 

[khmp]

I'm sorry... What was that? I was mesmerized by the gif... Animated buttons?

class ShiningForce_Menu
  def update
    ... other code

    @timer = 0 if @timer.nil?

    case @timer
    when 0...(Graphics.frame_rate * 2)
       @sprites[self.index].bitmap = RPG::Cache.picture(picture1)
    when (Graphics.frame_rate * 2)...(Graphics.frame_rate * 4)
      @sprites[self.index].bitmap = RPG::Cache.picture(picture2)
    else
      @timer = 0
    end
    @timer += 1

    ... other code
  end
end

The basic gist is that you have a timer that based on where it is along the timeline swap the image to what it needs to be. Doing it through the cache like that isn't expensive. I think that's what you were suggesting but if it isn't I apologize. You could alternatively count to two seconds toggle a boolean and change the image.

class ShiningForce_Menu
  def update
    ... other code

    @swap = true if @swap.nil?
    @timer = 0 if @timer.nil?

    if @swap && @timer == 0
      @sprites[self.index].bitmap = RPG::Cache.picture(picture1)
      @swap = false
    elsif !@swap && @timer == 0
      @sprites[self.index].bitmap = RPG::Cache.picture(picture2)
      @swap = true
    end

    @timer += 1

    @timer = 0 if @timer >= (Graphics.frame_rate * 2)

    ... other code
  end
end

There's actually probably a ton more ways this could be done. Once input is received change the picture back to whatever it was when it was inactive.

Good luck with it SamusK! :thumb:

 

[SamusK]

This is just maybe what I was looking for. Let me plug this in and see if it works.